Klarinet Archive - Posting 000125.txt from 1998/10

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] Wagner
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1998 18:01:28 -0400

> From: MX%"klarinet@-----.86
> Subj: [kl] Wagner

>
> In a message dated 10/2/98 8:17:37 AM, klarinet-digest-help@-----.org writes:
>
> <<
> Finally, if one likes Wagner's music, more power to you. You may not have
> experienced the type of prejudice he believed in, and can somehow glean
> something ennobling in his music. Just understand that those that cannot
> tolerate the man/music have a valid point from their moral perspective.>>
>
> As I have pointed out, Wagner's beliefs were sometimes at odds with his
> personal behavior. He allowed (insisted) his music to be conducted by a Jewish
> conductor. He conducted music by Mendelssohn himself (although he made a point
> of wearing gloves while doing so which he would then dispose of). Half of the
> greatest interpreters of Wagner's music in the last century have been Jewish.
>

David, I hesitate to disagree, but he did not insist on a Jewish conductor for
his operas. Hermann Levi was selected by Crazy Ludwig and Wagner protested
vehemently. Finally he told Levi that, in order to conduct Parsifal, he would
have to convert to Christianity. His treatment of Levi was like one treats
a lapdog, and Levi was a spineless piece of trash for writing to his rabbi
father saying that one needs only to understand the spirit in which Wagner
wrote "Judentum in Musik" to realize his greatness.

Furthermore, for you to use Mendelssohn as an example of a Jewish composer
conducted by Wagner is the worst possible contrast. Felix Mendelssohn
was a Protestant, specfically a Lutheran. He was a Christian. While
it is true that he was of Jewish heritage, that is not a chromosomal
condition that can never be gotten rid of. He gave it up when he embraced
fealty to Jesus of Nazareth and cannot be accurately referred to as a
Jewish composer. Neither, for that matter, can Mahler. Neither for
that matter can any convert from Judaism. It is nothing less than trying
to hang on to good but lost merchandise.

Finally this: I know of no universally agreed to statement that documents
that "half of the greatest interpreters of Wagner of the last century have
been Jewish." I know of no one who counted them, inquired as to their
ethnicity, or established what you said as statistical truth. It is the
kind of statement that is offered because it sounds nice, but there is
no bottom to it.

> As a Jewish person, I had difficulty for years with Wagner and his music.
> However, having seen 6 of his operas at the Met conducted by James Levine
> (also Jewish), hearing countless recordings and playing much of it myself I
> have realized the greatness that, for me, trancends evil itself.
>
> Then there's Woody Allen's attitude: "I can't listen to more than an hour of
> Wagner. It always makes me feel like invading Poland." I respect that too.
>
> David Hattner, NYC
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
Rosanne Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
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